Tender Violence in US Schools

"Tender Violence in US Schools is a provocative book that provides a critical genealogy of the white woman teacher imagined as the heroic savior of children of color. Rooted in nineteenth-century settler colonial missionizing, Bauer persuasively argues that a gendered discourse of 'benevolent whiteness' continues to unjustly shape education today. Such teacher-savior narratives erase the love and learning Black and Native children receive from their own communities. With historic examples from Hawaiʻi, South Carolina, and Dakota-Sioux Territory, alongside the contemporary Teach for America program, Bauer calls for a deep reckoning with the structural violence of education. A must-read for scholars in Education, Ethnic, Indigenous and Gender Studies."

Maile Arvin, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and History, University of Utah, and author of Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawaiʻi and Oceania.

"Tender Violence in U.S. Schools offers a vivid critical genealogy of white women teachers grounded in a social history of missionization through three 19th century case studies across diverse geographies – Hawai‘i, the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, and Dakota Sioux Territory. Interrogating the self-constructed discourse of white women’s selflessness and self-proclaimed heroism, this compelling study offers a robust theory of 'benevolent whiteness' to understand education as a tool for settler colonial and white supremacist control vis-à-vis Indigenous and Black students in order to challenge this formation as it is still endemic to U.S. schooling into the present."

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Professor of American Studies, Wesleyan University, and author of□Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty

"If we really want to address racial and gender inequality in education, we need to dig deep into the history of the teaching profession. Tender Violencedoes just that, interrogating the cherished trope of the teacher-as-savior. A provocation, this book offers a genealogy of benevolent whiteness in US schooling and shows us how feminized white supremacy gets replicated in the present. Bauer calls all who care about education to confront these histories and to open space for Black and Indigenous community visions. Essential reading for current and future teachers and school leaders!"

Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and author of The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School.